Improvements, And New Challenges, In the Spam Review / Appeal Process

This week, Blogger developed new spam review / appeal procedures, designed to make everybody's life (except, maybe, confirmed or self aware spammers) a bit simpler. Unfortunately, as we implement the new procedures in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we are starting to see other problems, which may affect the success of the new procedures.

The review / appeal process, as before, starts with use of the dashboard "Review blog" / "Unlock blog" link. However, for several reasons, the necessary link is not always there. Many blog owners, needing help, report seeing

You are not yet an author of any blogs ...

when logging in, after seeing the latest version of the well known display.

Blog has been removed

Sorry, the blog at myblogwhichisnotspam.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

Did you expect to see your blog here? See: 'I can't find my blog on the Web, where is it?'

Alternately, when seeing their dashboard, maybe with other, unclassified blogs displayed, not everybody will look for a "Show all" / "View all blogs" link.

And now, we see frustration building - and involving several possible scenarios, in various combinations.

People who don't know that URL of their blog - or don't know the Blogger account name or password - won't be able to login and request the blog to be reviewed or unlocked.
People who do login to Blogger may login to the wrong Blogger account, and will not see the "Review" / "Unlock" link on their dashboard.
When trying to use the "Forgot?" wizard, to recover account access, they see "Blog unknown", because the blog was removed.
We may be seeing another Blogger code problem, similar to one seen in January this year, which prevents the "Review" / "Unlock" blog link from appearing to those who do login properly.
There are other, mysterious and obscure scenarios, which will confuse people occasionally.

So life is getting simpler - but maybe more complicated at the same time.

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Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".

With Following, Anonymous Followers Can't Be Blocked

As people become used to Blogger Following as just another tool to connect people, they start to think about the implications . And we see questions like How do I block someone who's been following my blog secretly? I couldn't see her in my Followers list (hence I couldn't use the "Block this user" link), but I have looked at her profile and could see that she's Following my blog. Following, when you look at the bottom line, is no more than a feed subscription and an icon (possibly) displayed on your blog, and linking back to the profile of the Follower in question. If someone Follows your blog anonymously, all that they get is a subscription to the blog feed. If you publish a feed from your blog, and if the feed is open to anybody (which, right now, is the case ), then it's open to everybody. If someone wants to use Following to subscribe to the feed, you can't stop this. You can't block it before, or after, the fact. You can't Block w

The Real Blogger Status

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